Currently coveting a recycled, Chippendale original. That would be a large table for the garden from Chippendale Revival. Garden and home furniture; Sourced, designed and re-purposed in Sussex by my brother in law Peter Chippendale. I saw this table in 2010, I'm sure that it's sold by now but I still think it's gorgeous.
As the coldest August night in Northumberland...ever has just been recorded I am reminded of the year the snow fell early in our orchard. Here are some of the pictures that we took.
and here are some links to some apple themed stencils.
Autumn fruit basket is a pretty stencil of apples and blackberries designed by Hilary one of our original staff members. She designed Autumn fruit border too, a splendid apple blossom border can be found at the same link.
Another stencil of an apple basket can be found in the Folk Art section along with a fab apple tree. One of our customers had this tree enlarged to fit under a chair rail and it looked wonderful. There are all sorts of apple themed stencils. Just type apples into the search on our Stencil Library home page to see them.
Helen.
I just knew that if I dusted off the stencilled hammock and put it in the orchard we would be in for a month of cold weekends....and we were.
The stencils are JA47 and JA138 both are cherry blossom designs from our Japanese Style stencil collection at The Stencil Library
I noticed a little handwritten note on the hammock that told me that student Lauren and I stencilled it in 2002....
I think that might have been the last time that the sun shone!
Helen.
I seemed to have been surrounded by stencilled moths and butterflies for the past couple of weeks.
Friends and I made 80 of them to decorate the Jubilee Big Lunch at Bywell Hall. However, our offering was hugely out numbered by the efforts of the village school children and youth groups.
Photo above Susi Bellamy
Photo Susi Bellamy. From reception school to cubs and Brownies glitter and paint reigned supreme as paper templates were glued, tissued and decoupaged into a flight of exotic creatures to grace the lawns at Bywell.
It was lovely to see the children look for their artworks on the day. The idea was to sign your creation and retrieve it once the Big Lunch was over.
London company PSG Group gave us drafting film for The Butterfly Tree.
Stocksfield company Cherry Moon greetings cards donated card stock to us for the children's butterfies. All was gratefully received and put to good use.
The jubilee decorations were our communities biggest and most fun project for a long while, the painted butterflies was just one part of it. The templates were made by enlarging a few of the shapes from the new repeating stencil featured here. We used both the surround and the bit cut out from it to draw around onto the card. White Cherry Moon card butterflies fluttered under the canopy of a huge copper beech tree.
The red white and blue butterflies were stencilled and cut from a custom sized CO13 Butterfly Stencil. They will be reused when the Olympic torch route runs through Stocksfield this weekend.
The butterfly queen flags were stencilled onto chiffon. I photographed the process to share with you ....once you have had a break from butterflies for a while!
Have you been involved in a community decorative project...Jubilee, Olympics or making the local surroundings more fab?
Large, stenciled butterflies hung from the lower branches of a specimen oak in the grounds of Bywell Hall, Northumberland.
The tree was planted by a British princess, there are a few royal trees in the collection. The wingspan of the stencilled butterflies measured around 28 inches. I used matt emulsion paint from Crown Paint to stencil onto heavy drafting film from PSG in London. The film was slightly damaged which made it unfit for sale but was perfect for our use. When I was watching the master decorative painters at Salon in Paris a few years ago they told me that drafting film was a wonderful surface on which to demonstrate decorative techniques such marbling and wood graining. I took their advice, it is also beautiful to stencil and gild onto.
The stencil was a custom sized CO13 Butterfly from The Stencil Library. The design has three overlays and the cut out bit from the first layer of the stencil provided the template to make all the butterfly shapes from. The shape is quite simple and once drawn onto the film it can be cut with scissors or scalpel. Fortunately, I have a cutting machine so most of mine were cut for me. A group of friends came to help stencil them, drink Prosecco and provide laughter.
A mixture of first time stencillers and bubbly provided surprisingly good results and no butterflies were harmed in the process.
On the night before the Jubilee Big Lunch my ever patient friend Jeanne helped me arrange and secure the butterflies in the branches. We were unable to use step ladders (insurance fears) so we lobbed a ball of red blue and white twine through the branches taking great care not to damage anything. The lichen held the string in place allowing the butterflies to flutter above the heads of the picnickers.
It was dark when we finished which explains the wierd glow in some of the pictures. Since the picnic I have had requests from two families wanting to hire the butterflies as wedding decoration. They will make an appearance in my garden and might be seen lining the route of the Olympic Torch when it goes through our village. Using the same template we made thirty stencilled, red, white and blue butterflies onto white card, I'll show you what we did with those on a future post. This was not the only tree that we dressed with butterflies, a vast, copper beech tree was visited by strings of white butterflies and moths, I have nearly finished editing the pictures, please visit again to see them.
Helen.
The decorations created for The Big Lunch at Bywell Hall were simple, plentiful and made by the community.
The picnic was a celebration for The Queen's Diamond Jubilee. One of the re-occuring decorative motifs was the profile of Queen Elizabeth at the start of her reign.
The Stencil Library cut the large ones from heavy drafting film donated by PSG polyester converters of London and the small ones from heavy paper donated by Cherry Moon Cards of Stocksfield.
The visitors arrived and set out their picnic furniture to have lunch with the queen.
Later today I'll show you the butterfly trees that we created around the lawns at Bywell.
Helen.
This morning a European magazine asked me for some images of flower stencils that they wanted for their pages. They submitted a list of their choices and these designs were amongst them.
I had not used these stencils for a while and had forgotton how charming a simple uncomplicated flower stencil can look.
Use them sprigged over walls, furniture or fabrics.
Apply them as a decorative motif onto cupboard doors and cushion covers.
Put a 'spring' in your step by stencilling them onto stair risers!
The stencils can be found in the Folk Art and the Garden Room Collections.
Most of Great Britain has basked in the sun for the past week but now temperatures will plummet in our area from 20 down to 3. So, before the blooms turn brown with frost and the sullen skies return I thought I would nip to the garden with the camera. Yes, that's me in a bauble.
magnolia and prunus
forsythia
orange, yellow shrub, I forget it's name
The honey bees and the bumbles are busy.
Christopher the pheasant and his six wives have been indulging in dust baths and sun bathing.
various daffodils
So, fellow Northerners....enjoy and remember the warmth. It may be a month or so before we experience this 'summer' again!
winter jasmine.
Helen.
I was so excited to read about the launch of Leaf a new on line magazine dedicated to outdoor living will debut later today. I read about it at The Daily Basics
One of the co founders of Leaf is Susan Cohan the other is Rochelle Greyer of Studio G blog. Whenever I visit Studio G I find the most wonderful garden design and fabulous products there.
image dedon.de via studio G.
image Rochelle Studio G blog.
This was a recent camping party for a nine year old. So pretty.
Rochelle has mentioned Designinspiration in the past, maybe I should send some pictures of my stencilled garden!
I resisted the tempation to show photos from the new magazine, you will have to go and visit. I have subscribed to Leaf and I think you may want to. It's free and it looks gorgeous. Here are some of the ingredients promised for the first issue.
Yarn Bombs in Seattle
Ideas for a front porch update
What to wear as the weather cools
Apples… history, recipes and more
A garden Before and After project in Long Beach, California
A seasonal cocktail video
Creating warmth outside in autumn
A Moroccan inspired garden in Silver Lake
Inspirations from an island in Norway.
Continuing the 'tour our home' series let me introduce you to the Gustavian bedroom.
It's my bedroom and I stencilled it in 1997. Although the walls are scuffed and the room now has a shabby appearance, I am loathe to paint over it....but I will.
I chose the colours to match the view of the garden.
The bed is in the centre of the room and from there I can see the Tyne Valley through both windows.
The idea for this room came from grand Swedish houses during the Gustavian period.
Also, I took inspiration from the botanical wall paintings at Wallington Hall in Northumberland.
You will find the floral stencils in our Garden Room Range. The allover stencil pattern on the floor and the boxes is in the Blue and White collection.
A border stencil of laurel leaves from the Empire Collection frames botanical prints and stencilled panels.
Rachel and Stephen visited Wallington Hall recently. I will show his photographs of the wall paintings in a future post so that you can see the design influence.
The Gustavian bedroom is one of the rooms that visitors see on tours of The Stencilled Home and appears in the book and Dvd of the same name.
As soon as I have plans firmed up for a replacement stencilled room I shall paint over this one and create something else... I hope I will enjoy it as much as this one.
Helen.
